1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method of detecting the types of lower-level parts constituting an arbitrary upper-level part, or the types of upper-level parts including an arbitrary lower-level part as a component.
2. Description of the Related Art
In the manufacturing industry for manufacturing various products, it is important to know the types and quantity of components (part elements) necessary for products to be manufactured in a certain period, or to know products for which certain parts are used. This process is usually called device explosion. Such a process can be manually performed if only a few types and a small quantity of components are required. However, if many types and a large quantity of components are used, the process becomes extremely cumbersome, and hence requires processing by a data processing apparatus such as a computer. However, it has not been fully studied how to efficiently perform the above-described processing in such a data processing apparatus.